Reuse It!

Our winters can be soooo chilly, obviously. We try to conserve on fuel because it is so expensive and we burn wood in our wood stove. When we bring in wood, it is often covered in snow and wet. It makes it tough to get the fire started, so I make fire starters by saving our dryer lint and egg cartons. I have to purchase candle wax and I often purchase a scent as for the wax as well but I don't need to. The scent just makes the process of creating homemade fire starters enjoyable.

I get out my electric burner so I don't make a mess on my glass cook top. I also use a tall pot designed for melting wax. It has a great pour spout so I don't have to dip the wax out of a pan which creates a nasty mess.

The final product! After I pour the wax onto the lint in the egg carton, I let them dry. Then I rip them into individual pieces. The burn time is over 6 minutes which gives me plenty of time to get the fire going. You do have to pour a good amount of wax into each section, if you don't, the lint will pop out. That isn't a big deal, but they certainly burn longer when made with more wax.

You can see some wax paper and sawdust. This time, I laid wax paper into the lid of the egg carton and put a thin layer of fresh sawdust into it. Then I melted more wax and poured it over the sawdust. I had to pour it in there THICK. When it was all dry, I broke the chunk into pieces and viola, more fire starters. The burn time for these is much longer, but I don't always have fresh sawdust or extra wax.

The wax costs about $24.00 up here for a good chunk. 1/3 of the chunk made 3 dozen fire starters and the slab of sawdust starters. I put them into a decorative container near our stove.***Be Careful Though - they are combustible.*** My husband had the container sitting on the stove once when he was starting it and they flamed up from the heat.

I always make sure I set aside plenty of time to do this also. I like to have a couple hours alone in the kitchen so I'm not walking away from them, though I can definitely do this with mass chaos around me. I simply like to have the time to myself to listen to the 60's Pandora channel and dance around while I do it. And I sing, every song, as loud as I can.

A SPECIAL GREETING FROM FRAN DRESCHER

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